


Don't Move

by Merkwerkee



Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [15]
Category: Masters of the Metaverse
Genre: Snakes, Whumptober 2019, danger noodle, during his time in the Vietnam War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:08:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22855222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: The problem with sleeping out in the open is that body heat can attract strange bedfellows, who then refuse to leave peacefully.
Series: Being Bruno Hamilton [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1643020





	Don't Move

It was a quiet, clear night.

Three men slept under the cover of heavy foliage while another regarded the world around him silently at a strategic distance from the others. Insects hummed under the eaves while nocturnal predators and prey went about their nightly world under the silent silvering of the full moon high above.

It was two more days to the first objective, then another four to the second, but they’d had decent luck so far with weather and patrols both and were now somewhat ahead of schedule. If their luck held, they might even get the extra time as a two-day pass into town for some R&R. The man on watch smirked to himself at the thought of what he’d do with a two-day pass, then shook his head. Mission first, fun later.

Looking up at the moon for a moment, he rose and went to wake the next shift.

“Hammer,” Amos muttered quietly. “Hammer, you bastard, wake up and smell the chemical agents. It’s my turn to sleep.” He reached down to poke the already-stirring larger man - never a good idea to prod him when he was more than half-asleep but funny as hell to do it when he was awake - and froze as a hiss split the night. Unless Hamilton had finally developed a nonverbal vocabulary outside of growls that reminded Amos of the brown bears he used to chase out of the garbage cans with a shotgun, there was something more than his partner in that bed roll.

 **“Don’t. Move.”** He said, and he could _feel_ Hamilton tense. Moving slowly, he reached into his pack and pulled out the heavy-duty flashlight from its pouch. With a click - and a wince, because it was fucking bright as hell and he’d just spent three hours staring out into the streetlight equivalent of the Black Hole of Calcutta - he turned the thing on and, just to fuck with him, flashed Hamilton in the face with it before slowly sliding it down the larger man’s still form like he was checking him out at the beach. 

The light, of course, brought the other two nearby men awake and, once they found no visible threat, complaining. Weber was, anyway. “The hell you doin’ shinin’ a fuckin’ light out at this hour? You wanna bring every Commie from here to China down on our damn heads?” Weber’s voice was muzzy with sleep - he’d been the previous watch - but he kept his voice low. Amos ignored him and kept moving the light down Hamilton’s tense form.

About halfway down, he found it. Sitting just above his teammate’s ass, like some super freaky and dangerous tramp stamp, was a little black snake with white bars up and down its length. _A little, pissed-off black snake_ Amos amended mentally as the thing hissed again, a noise all out of proportion with its size. Amos was about 96% sure everyone quit breathing for a hot second after the thing stopped, but as it seemed content to just sit where it was there was a collective exhalation that almost rivaled the light breeze.

“What does it look like?” Tunstall asked, voice low but even in that dangerous way he had. Amos moved the light a little. “Black snake, white bars, kinda small.”

“Get it off me,” Hamilton said, a weird tension in his voice, and Amos felt his eyebrows climbing for his hairline. “Do my ears deceive me? Is Sergeant Fucking Hammer afraid of… _snakes?_ ” Weber snickered at Amos’ remark, but Hamilton’s response was cut off by the thing shifting around; nobody breathed again until it had stilled for several long seconds. _“No,”_ Hamilton muttered emphatically, clearly trying not to upset the danger worm any more than he already had. “I have a slight problem with the fact that one of the _world’s most venomous snakes_ has decided to take up residence on my ass.”

“Maybe it’s an ass kind of snake. You’ve had every girl in the country staring at it, maybe the reptiles are trying to get a piece of that action,” Amos rebutted automatically, mouth moving on autopilot as he scanned the forest floor nearby to find the kind of stick he wanted. Wasn’t his first time convincing a damn snake that it wanted to be somewhere else, he just needed the right kind of stick or this night would be whole fucking lot worse.

“A comforting thought,” Hamilton replied dryly, and Amos grinned to himself. Whoever said his teammate was a humorless asshole….was right, most of the time. Hamilton’s Sahara-dry wit and excellent timing were buried deep beneath the surface, especially when anyone with a rank higher than lieutenant was around. Amos’ smile dimmed. Brass turned Hamilton into a right joyless bastard, a stickler for orders and rules and unquestioned authority that made Amos…uneasy. Brass were people, and people made mistakes…

He shook his head and picked up a stick that looked about what he wanted before turning back to Hamilton. “Alright, hold still,” he said needlessly, and he could feel the glare Hamilton sent his way like burning summer sunshine on his skin. “What are you doing?” Tunstall asked, the tension humming in his voice like a plucked guitar string. Amos took the tip of his tongue between his teeth and didn’t answer; much as he loved winding his teammates up, this trick required all the concentration he had to spare.

Moving slowly, he brought the forked end of the stick up to the snake’s head. Ever so gently, he eased the pronged end as close to under the thing’s head as he dared; no more hissing was a good sign, the tongue flicking in and out rapidly less so. Still, he just had to press the stick carefully, just like so, move it up a little, easy does it, and…

Amos twitched the stick violently, sending the small snake flying into the night and Hamilton was up in a flash, breathing heavily. _“Don’t,”_ he said emphatically, reaching out and jerking the flashlight out of Amos’ hand, “ever do that again.” Amos poked him with the stick he was still holding. “ _Thank you_ , Tongs. _I wouldn’t be alive without you_ , Tongs. _My eternal gratitude, o manliest of men, for saving me from twelve inches of death_. Any one of these responses would be appropriate and helpful, especially when I just saved your life.”

Weber snickered, and Tunstall coughed suspiciously. Amos patted himself on the back internally; it took a lot to get a reaction out of Tunstall.

Hamilton stared at him for a long moment before he clicked off the flashlight. “Find a different spot to sleep, we don’t know if it’ll come back or not.” Amos stared at Hamilton’s dark silhouette for a long moment before he moved to collect the bedroll. “Such a _comforting_ though will lull me straight to dreamland, I’m sure. You always know the thing to say to give me the best fucking sleep of my life.”

It didn’t take long for Amos - and the others, nobody really liked the thought of bunking with a reptile if they didn’t have to - to redo the sleeping arrangement to something less likely to let snakes come and go as they pleased. Yawning widely and pointedly, he climbed in and made himself comfortable.

“Tongs.”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks.”

Amos smiled softly to himself. “Anytime.”


End file.
